GEO Newsletter

Distinguished Freshman Dinner 2014

Distinguished Freshman Dinner 2014
May 19th, 2014

Every spring, Undergraduate Studies honors approximately 25 freshmen whose academic record in the first two quarters has been particularly strong. At this dinner in their honor, representatives from the Provost's Office; Undergraduate Studies; the Ignatian Center; the Center for Science, Technology, and Society; and the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics provide information about internships and fellowships. This year, the Global Engagement Office was also able to join this event and help represent international opportunities at SCU.

Additionally, each year SCU students speak to the freshmen about their experiences applying for internships and fellowships.

Both speakers were profoundly influenced by their international experiences at SCU:

Erik McAdams '14
During his time at SCU, Erik applied what he learned in his Civil Engineering classes to solving global problems. This included traveling to Uganda during the summer following his sophomore year to teach a solar manufacturing class to college students, designing a water distribution grid for a rural town in Honduras with SCU's chapter of Engineers Without Borders, and focusing a research project on emergency power relief to hospitals in Central America. Erik was selected as an alternate for the Fulbright Award and is hoping his project to address rural poverty in earthquake-prone Ecuador by analyzing the structural characteristics of houses in remote villages will be funded. This would be a continuation of the work he did during the summer of 2013 after receiving a Johnson Research Fellowship from SCU.

Saayeli Mukherji '13
Saayeli has a strong interest in the intersection of different cultures and global business. She pursued this passion in many ways, including working to secure a partnership for a Chinese retailer to supply American boutiques in highschool, interning for a summer as an analyst for a global investment banking team within Deutsche Bank, and receiving the Hackworth Business Ethics Fellowship to write a business ethics case about the Bangladesh factory fire in 2013. Her business ethics case received a strong reaction from global readers and reinforced her interest in ethical business and international law. As a recipient of the Fulbright Award, Saayeli will study at the Duisenberg School of Finance in The Netherlands. She plans to create an open forum on business ethics to help prevent global ethics catastrophes such as the 2008 financial crisis.